


if we could fly together

by harold_styles



Series: sad larry [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Closeted Louis, Harry Needs a Hug, Harry Styles Loves Louis Tomlinson, Hurt Harry, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon, Sad, Short, Short One Shot, Solo Artist Harry Styles, Song: If I Could Fly (One Direction)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24090574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harold_styles/pseuds/harold_styles
Summary: The crowd goes mad, screaming the lyrics before he can decide if he wants to go on, but it’s too late now. So he sings, until he can’t. Until the part that he dreads is near and he can hear his voice in his mind. They feel him hesitating, and they wait. He can feel them holding their breath.ORHarry sings If I Could Fly and it has consequences.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Series: sad larry [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738003
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	if we could fly together

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I'm new to the fandom but already deep in the Larry stuff so I wanted to start contributing.  
> This is just a small piece to begin my journey. It's sad, sorry.
> 
> I imagine this happens more or less in the present. The song Harry sings at the beginning is If I Could Fly.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: this is a work of fiction and under no circumstances am I claiming that the story in this is real.  
> Remember this is all to have fun, guys, and that these are real people with real feelings. Let fanfiction stay fiction!

It’s been so long since he sang this song. Since his mouth moved around the words and tasted the feeling that stabbed through his chest with every note. His fingers play through the cords of the guitar as if looking for an old familiar path, for the ghost of something that is always there but not present enough. The first verse pushes out all the air from his lungs. The crowd goes mad, screaming the lyrics before he can decide if he wants to go on, but it’s too late now. So he sings, until he can’t. Until the part that he dreads is near and he can hear  _ his _ voice in his mind. They feel him hesitating, and they wait. He can feel them holding their breath. It’s completely impossible and utterly unbelievable but he can sense in the air that they know what is happening, that they read it in his face, that the world has stopped for a minute to see if his voice breaks in the next verse.

It does, but just a bit.

  
  


“Hello”

Harry’s heart jumps one, two, three times. It can’t be.

“Hello?” repeats the voice.

“Hi,” he says shyly. 

“Hey”

Harry holds his breath and the seconds seem to drag with the pace of a snake, slithering between his legs, up his body and around his throat. 

“It’s me”

Harry knows. It’s stupid, because he didn’t even said his name, but he didn’t need to say it either and they both know it. They both know who it is and why he is calling. A heavy silence follows, and Harry does not dare break it. Well, actually, he’s broken the silence already, in front of thousands of people. It’s the other man’s turn now.

“I saw it,” says the voice from his screen, “the video of you singing”

“I figured”

Silence again.

“Were you waiting for me to call?”

“You know I wasn’t.” And then, because Harry’s a masochist apparently, he adds: “You never call”

“Yeah, well.” A laugh. A cruel one, if Harry has to point it out. “You never call either”

“We both know it’d be useless”

“And yet”

It’s implicit: and yet you sang it. Not the song,  _ our _ song. The one you wrote about me. Why did you do it? And it’s a miracle that Harry’s still able to get all that from two words, after all these years.

“And yet”

He knows the other man can read the space between the words as well.

“Harry”

“Louis”

It’s a reflex. Louis says Harry’s name, Harry says Louis’. It’s like one word is attached to the other, like their bodies used to be. Harry’s mind seems to have forgotten the part in which their bodies don’t do that anymore. No more HarryandLouis. Just Harry, and Louis.

“I miss you.” 

It’s merely a whisper, something Harry only catches because it’s said in between one thought and another. But he does, and the meaning of that short statement clashes into him with the force of a hundred tides. He feels his knees go weak and his hands start to shake and he has to sit down on the floor right there in the middle of the kitchen. And isn’t it ironic that he was just in the kitchen when the phone rang in his pocket? His mind throws him back into the memories of another kitchen, another boy next to him, his hands making a mess of the food, the smell of it mixing with the smell of him and his laughter so loud, loud, loud.

“Sorry,” says Louis, and Harry wants to yell at him.

“No, no” he says, his voice hoarse. “I… I miss you too, Lou. God, so much”

He hears Louis sigh in his ear and, fuck, that brings some more memories he’s not ready for yet. “I cried when I heard you sing my verse,” he admits, chuckling.

Harry smiles, an honest smile. He misses those. “I cried myself to sleep the night after the…”

“Can I see you?” Louis interrupts. 

“No”

And it’s a defense mechanism at this point, the way Harry answers with a negative. It’s not the first time Louis asks that, but it has been at least two years, and Harry has been training himself to reject him, repeating no, no, no, in front of the mirror like a madman until the word lost all sense. Because if it didn’t make any sense it didn’t hurt so much to say it. So he repeats it now under his breath like a prayer. “No, no, no, no”

“Harry,” Louis stops him. “Please”

“No”

He knows it hurts Louis. He knows it does. But it does not hurt him in the way it hurts Harry, because he knows what Louis is asking. See you means see you under the cover of the night, at 4.30 a.m., a black car, I drive, your place not mine. Let me in, take it off, turn them off, don’t make a sound. See you means an empty bed the morning after, no signs of my presence except for the aching in your thighs. See you means I need to see you but not enough as to need it every day for the rest of our lives.

“But you sang the song”

And Harry wants to cry but he won’t. He sang the song because he wants, he wants so deeply it fills up every pore in his skin, but he cannot have what he wants and he is tired of settling for less. 

“I know,” he says. 

And he knows he will understand:  _ I don’t sing it for you anymore. _

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry I made that so sad. And just to clarify, I didn't mean for Louis to appear as if he doesn't love Harry. More like he is too closeted to admit he does so.  
> Leave me a comment in my first fic and I will give you instant virtual cuddles <3


End file.
